Right now it’s about 4 inches — which is way too big. I might be okay with three, but I know it’s not what they want. They want two. Two inches maximum. What am I to do? Cutting it is painful, to say the least. Torturous even. At best it just doesn’t feel right. Hell, if I had my way it would be five inches if not more!

I’m of course talking about the thickness of my printed manuscript.

I’ve been working on fixing it, line by line, one word at a time and while it’s true that I’m managing to reduce my word count, I’m finding it very costly. What is the cost, you ask? I feel like I’m deleting my own voice from it. I’m trading word count for style. That can’t be good, right?

I’d like to put a question out to all my published author friends. If I decide to e-publish I can keep my inches and be happy with my manuscript. Size only matters to a publishing house. Am I correct?

For all the readers out there, how do you feel about buying a thicker-than-usual book? Do you give it a chance or do you pass it over? Of course if it’s an e-book, you won’t necessarily even know how long it is until after you buy it–I never do, since the size isn’t in direct relation to the cost.

Does size matter to you?